An Introduction to MaryShelley's Frankenstein

By

Stephanie Forward

Cover illustration courtesy of Stephen Collins

This eBook was produced by OpenLearn - The home of freelearning from The Open University.

It is made available to you under a CreativeCommons (BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

‘I busied myself to think of a story…One which would speakto the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrillinghorror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdlethe blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.’

(From Mary Shelley’s Introduction to the 1831 edition ofFrankenstein).

The life of Mary Shelley (1797-1851)Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in London on 30 August1797, to the radical feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and thephilosopher William Godwin. Her mother died as a result ofcomplications following the birth, and after Godwin’s secondmarriage Mary was brought up with two stepsiblings, a half-sister(Fanny Imlay), and a half-brother (named William, after theirfather).

Their home in Holborn was located near the candlelit abattoirsunder Smithfield: indeed, the children could hear the screams ofanimals being slaughtered. On a more positive note Mary benefitedfrom a broad education, enhanced by visits to the household fromliterary luminaries including William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb andSamuel Taylor Coleridge. At the age of ten she had an amusing

poem published: Mounseer Nongtongpaw; or, The Discoveries ofJohn Bull in a Trip to Paris.

Unfortunately her relationship with her stepmother was far fromcordial, and the onset of eczema when Mary was thirteen mayhave been partly psychosomatic. As she had poor health generally,she was sometimes sent away for long periods of recuperation.During one of the journeys she hid her money in her stays for safe-keeping; nevertheless it was stolen from her!

The poet Percy Shelley first met Mary in 1812. Later theyarranged clandestine meetings beside her mother’s grave. Shelleyand his friend Byron advocated that people should follow idealsrather than imposed conventions and rules. Lady Caroline Lambfamously declared that Byron was ‘Mad, bad and dangerous toknow’, and similar accusations were pointed at Shelley (who wasnicknamed ‘Mad Shelley’ at Eton). In 1814 he deserted hispregnant wife, Harriet, to elope with Mary, who was alsoexpecting a baby. Their travels took them to France, Germany,Italy and Switzerland, and were described in the co-authored textHistory of a Six Weeks Tour (1817). They were accompanied byMary’s stepsister, Jane (later Claire) Clairmont, in a scandalous,unconventional triangular relationship which lasted for eight years.

Baby Clara was born in February 1815, but lived for only twelvedays. Mary’s journal records concerns that her death might havebeen prevented. In January of the following year she gave birth to a

son, William. The travellers were in Geneva when Byron proposedthat they should write ghost stories. Ultimately, Mary’scontribution developed into her novel Frankenstein. It isremarkable to think that she began this extraordinary work whenshe was just eighteen years old.

The suicides of Fanny Imlay and Shelley’s wife also occurred inthat memorable year, 1816. Shelley married Mary, and their thirdchild, another Clara, arrived in 1817. Mary completed her book:Frankenstein was published – anonymously - on 1 January 1818.Little Clara passed away in the same year, then William died ofmalaria in 1819. Percy had a jotting book, in which he conveyedtheir heartbreak:

My dearest M. wherefore hast thou goneAnd left me in this dreary world alone,Thy form is here indeed – a lovely one –But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode…For thine own sake I cannot follow theeDo thou return for mine.

Fortunately their fourth child, Percy Florence, survived.

Percy Shelley drowned in 1822, after visiting Byron and LeighHunt. During his cremation onlookers tried to retrieve keepsakesfrom the flames. Mary salvaged what was left of her husband’s

heart, wrapped it in silk, placed it between the pages of his poemAdonais, and secreted it in her travelling-desk. It was discoveredthere almost thirty years later.

The desolate widow returned to London. Her financial situationwas precarious, particularly as she had a youngster to support;luckily, Mary was a versatile author and managed to earn a livingfrom writing. Her other novels were: Valperga (1823), The LastMan (1826), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore(1835) and Falkner (1837). From 1824-40 she also penned shortstories, biographies, articles and reviews for journals, and travelnarratives. A novella, Mathilda, was published posthumously in1959.

Mary’s son Percy proved to be a very decent man. After theauthor’s death on 1 February 1851 her affectionate daughter-in-lawcreated a special shrine for Mary, Shelley and their circle atBoscombe Lodge, near Bournemouth.

The genesis of FrankensteinIn 1816 Lord Byron and his physician, John Polidari, were stayingat the Villa Diodati near Geneva. One stormy night in June, theywere spending time with Shelley, Mary and Claire. Incessanttorrential rain had trapped them indoors, and Byron challenged thegroup to produce their own ghost stories. They were inspired by

German tales (translated into French), from a collection of volumescalled Fantasmagoriana. In the preface to the 1831 edition ofFrankenstein, Mary claimed that she experienced a nightmare inwhich she pictured a ‘pale student of the unhallowed arts’ and ‘thehideous phantasm of a man stretched out’. In the dream she sawthe figure ‘stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion’. ‘At first Ithought but of a few pages of a short tale; but Shelley urged me todevelop the idea at greater length.’

She knew that the Italian Luigi Galvani had experimented withstimulating the muscles of dead frogs in the 1780s, and was awarethat scientists were exploring the possibility of using electricalpower to regenerate human corpses. Her childhood home had beenvisited by the chemists Humphry Davy and William Nicholson,who were interested in galvanic electricity. At the age of fourteenMary had witnessed some of Davy’s experiments at the RoyalInstitute, and she described herself as ‘a devout but nearly silentlistener’ to Byron and Shelley’s animated discussions aboutscience.

The story

Frankenstein opens in an epistolary style, with letters fromCaptain Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret. The narrative thenswitches to Victor Frankenstein. In Gothic novels this technique,termed ‘nesting’, is often used: stories are cradled within stories, as

characters relate their tales.

En route to the North Pole, Walton rescues Victor from the ice.The latter recalls his happy youth in Geneva with his family andhis friend, Henry Clerval. At the University of Ingolstadt Victorembarks upon scientific experiments to discover the secret of life,hoping to produce a living creature from body parts. His meddlinghas tragic consequences. Having achieved his aim, he is horror-stricken at the outcome. Subsequently the creature goes missing.When Victor receives news of his brother’s death he guesses whois responsible; however, Justine Moritz is accused and executed forthe crime. Victor’s guilt is now compounded.

The creature laments that he is lonely. His words are poignant: itbecomes apparent that he is not innately evil. To his acute distress,the people he has encountered have reacted with terror andloathing; yet he is desperate to belong to a family. Thus thecreature is depicted as an innocent victim who becomes malignafter being rejected by his maker and by society. He declares: ‘I ammalicious because I am miserable’, and pleads with Victor tofashion a mate for him.

Later Victor destroys the female companion, causing the creatureto seek revenge. Henry’s violent demise is followed by the murderof Victor’s bride, Elizabeth, and his father’s death from grief.Victor, in turn, pursues the creature to exact vengeance, whichleads to a dramatic confrontation. After Victor dies, the creature

weeps over him. Isolated and remorseful, he departs to face hisown fate.

Frankenstein; Or, The ModernPrometheusMary Shelley’s novel is a complex work that defies classification.She successfully blended realist, Gothic and Romantic elements toproduce an enduring literary masterpiece. Her strategy ofemploying multiple narrators (Walton, Victor, the creature) meansthat there is not a single consistent viewpoint or message; rather,the text lends itself to a range of interpretations.

It is realistic in detailing Victor’s family life, education, careeraspirations, intention to marry, and so on; but the sub-title, TheModern Prometheus, alerts us to Mary’s aim of producing a new‘version’ of an ancient Greek myth. In the legend, Prometheus wasa Titan who brought enlightenment and knowledge to mankind.The gods punished him when he stole fire from Mount Olympus.He was chained to a rock; every day an eagle tore out and devouredhis liver; each night the organ would grow back. There are clearanalogies between the stories of Victor and Prometheus: hubrisleads to tragedy, and both suffer torments as a consequence of theiractions. Frankenstein also echoes the Genesis account of Adamand Eve and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Publication and the variouseditionsFive hundred copies of the first edition were printed, and the textwas divided into three volumes. The critical reception was mostlyunfavourable. John Croker was damning in the Quarterly Review(January 1818):

Our taste and our judgement alike revolt at this kind ofwriting, and the greater the ability with which it may beexecuted the worse it is - it inculcates no lesson of conduct,manners, or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuseits readers, unless their taste have been deplorably vitiated…

Frankenstein was reprinted in 1823, in two volumes, this timecrediting Mary openly.

The first theatre production was Richard Brinsley Peake’sPresumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein (1823). When Marycame back to London after her husband’s death she found that hertale was being staged, with a frightening monster which sprangfrom a concealed laboratory at the top of a staircase. In her bookthe scientist who re-animates the corpse has the surnameFrankenstein; but by 1830 this appellation was being used for thecreature. The name ‘Frankenstein’ gradually became associatedwith things that were monstrous and threatening. In the Universal

Studios movie of 1931 James Whale directed the famous versionstarring Boris Karloff. Shelley’s text has been adapted for stage andscreen many times.

When Mary was writing the Introduction to the 1831 edition shewas keen to contradict suspicions that Percy Shelley had beenresponsible for the novel. She stated:

I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, norscarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet butfor his incitement, it would never have taken the form inwhich it was presented. From this declaration I must exceptthe preface. As far as I can recollect, it was entirely writtenby him.’

However, in his pioneering work, The Original Frankenstein,Professor Charles E. Robinson has demonstrated that PercyShelley collaborated with Mary. The first draft is in the BodleianLibrary, Oxford. Percy acted as a kind of editor by makingadditions, deletions and other amendments. Robinson haspresented both Mary’s original version and the revisions. Percy’srecommendations affected many aspects of the text, addressing theplot, structure, themes, descriptions and characterizations.

The novel’s sympathetic portrayal of the creature inevitably drawsattention to the defects in Victor Frankenstein’s personality. Thisis interesting, in view of the belief that the character is partly based

on Percy Shelley, and that the poet actively contributed to themanuscript drafts. It is possible to interpret Frankenstein as acritique of the Romantic ideal of the solitary genius.

Mary decided to offer explanations of the changes she made for the1831 version:

They are principally those of style. I have changed no portionof the story, nor introduced any new ideas or circumstances. Ihave mended the language where it was so bald as to interferewith the interest of the narrative; and these changes occuralmost exclusively in the beginning of the first volume.Throughout they are entirely confined to such parts as aremere adjuncts to the story, leaving the core and substance of ituntouched.’

In fact the novel underwent some notable changes for the 1831edition, which was published as a single volume in the Bentley’sStandard Novels series. For example, it places greater emphasis onthe inexorability of fate, and Victor is described in a morebenevolent way. Even slight alterations can be illuminating. In the1818 text it is stated that Victor and Elizabeth are first cousins.Many readers would have considered it improper for them tomarry. When Mary revised the text for republication in 1831, thereference to their blood relationship was removed; insteadElizabeth is said to be adopted by the Frankensteins.

Percy Shelley’s thoughts about the novel were publishedposthumously in the review On Frankenstein (in the Athenaeum,10 November 1832):

Treat a person ill and he will become wicked. Requiteaffection with scorn; - let one being be selected for whatevercause as the refuse of his kind - divide him, a social being,from society, and you impose upon him the irresistibleobligations - malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that, toooften in society, those who are best qualified to be itsbenefactors and its ornaments are branded by some accidentwith scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude of heart, intoa scourge and a curse.

What next?If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may beinterested in joining the millions of people who discover our freelearning resources and qualifications by visiting The OpenUniversity.

More on Mary Shelley andFrankenstein

Mary Shelley: The expert view

The rise of Gothic fiction

A note on copyrightExcept for third party materials and/or otherwise stated (see termsand conditions) the content in this eBook is released for use underthe terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

In short this allows you to use the content throughout the worldwithout payment for non-commercial purposes in accordance withthe Creative Commons non commercial sharealike licence. Please

read this licence in full along with OpenLearn terms and conditionsbefore making use of the content.

When using the content you must attribute us (The OpenUniversity) (the OU) and any identified author in accordance withthe terms of the Creative Commons Licence.

Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach ofthe terms and conditions and/or intellectual property laws.

We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any termsand conditions provided here without notice.

All rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commonslicence are retained or controlled by The Open University.